


You'll Never Need Wonder

by orphan_account



Category: One Direction (Band)
Genre: 1dwinterexchange, 2015 - Freeform, Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Angst with a Happy Ending, Coming Out, Flashbacks, Larry Stylinson Is Real, M/M, No baby, otra, rainbow bondage bears
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-12-27
Updated: 2015-12-27
Packaged: 2018-05-09 19:30:29
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 9,066
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5552465
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/orphan_account/pseuds/orphan_account
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>
  <i>“You get like this,” Harry said yesterday, as he bit the soft skin of Louis’ inner thigh, his long fingers making Louis writhe and sweat beneath him, “every time we start touring again.”</i>
</p><p>
  <i>And Louis hates him for it, but he’s right.  It takes him a couple of weeks, usually, to stop resenting the world he finds himself in. To fall back into an easy rhythm. To remember that this won’t last forever.</i>
</p><p>Canon-divergent (No baby). 2015 through Louis’ eyes.</p>
            </blockquote>





	You'll Never Need Wonder

**Author's Note:**

  * For [fightingforlarry](https://archiveofourown.org/users/fightingforlarry/gifts).



> This story was written before Christmas. Thanks to #TRP for getting me through everything since then.

 

The fan above their bed is turning in slow, lazy circles, casting shadows across the roof.  It’s uncomfortably hot and the sheet feels clammy beneath him. Louis can’t sleep, freshly annoyed at himself for fighting Harry over leaving the aircon off. He hates being cold, but he’s conceding now that this is worse.

He rolls toward Harry, the sheet bunched low across his hips, watching his chest rising and falling. He wants to reach out and touch him, place his hand against the smooth planes of Harry’s chest, but he doesn’t disturb him.  Their wake-up call will be soon, and if Harry stirs he’ll press against Louis and draw him close and it’s too fucking hot.

Louis thinks about slipping out of the hotel room to swim. An idle thought; pointless. There are dogs out there, and security teams, and despite all that some fucking loser with a camera who camped out in the trees yesterday to take pictures of them in their underwear.  

Harry doesn’t really care. They’ve never agreed on this.  

“Why does it matter, what they print? They can say what they like, they don’t know the truth.”  

Harry gets irritated with cameras jammed in his face, but he doesn’t really give a shit what the world knows about him, about _them_. What the world makes up.

It’s a pointless argument. Louis can’t make him understand that every stupid tabloid headline makes him feel like less of an artist, makes him wonder if he’ll ever escape this circus.  Harry doesn’t get it, but he defends their privacy relentlessly for Louis just the same. Harry has more injunctions to his name than anyone will ever realise.

Louis rolls onto his back with a sigh.  He’s in fucking Australia, and it should be amazing. It was, last night at a private party on a rooftop, clutching Harry’s hand in the midst of what felt like their own personal carnival.  The smile Harry gave him each time he pulled Louis to him and kissed him so soundly that Louis’ chest felt tight, like his ribcage was too small to contain all Harry caused inside.  “These clothes,” he whispered, low and rough against Louis’ ear, one hand grazing across the small of his back, “need to be gone.”  Harry still does this to him, years and continents since the first time. Still makes heat race across his skin, his heart skipping a few paces behind.

But now he’s cooped up in this hotel, and he knows it’s stupid and ungrateful, but if he’s going to romp across the Pacific he wants to do it without One Direction hanging around like a monkey on his back.

“You get like this,” Harry said yesterday, as he bit the soft skin of Louis’ inner thigh, his long fingers making Louis writhe and sweat beneath him, “every time we start touring again.”

And Louis hates him for it, but he’s right.  It takes him a couple of weeks, usually, to stop resenting the world he finds himself in. To fall back into an easy rhythm. To remember that this won’t last forever.

He listens to the fan loop overhead, to the insects outside the window, to Harry’s even breathing beside him.

A month ago, longer maybe, when he was staying in their apartment in New York and Harry and Jeff decided to roadtrip across from LA, Harry called him from a bar in the middle of Bumfuck, Nowhere. He was drunk, complaining about what a terrible driver Jeff was and how the car smelled like Cheetos, and that the sheets in the hotel were scratchy and didn’t smell like Louis.  He slurred, it was ridiculous; Louis loved him all the more.

And Harry misled him.  Told him he was hours away, and Louis got back to their apartment from the studio exhausted and cranky and itching for a cigarette to find him sprawled out on their bed.  Boots all over the covers, wearing a ridiculous shirt, and scowling at Louis’ sheet music, covered in his scribbles.

“Stop spying, it’s not finished,” he said in a rush, as he threw himself at him, felt Harry’s frown melt into that smile that always cut him in half.  Strong hands wrapped around his hips, and his fingers twisted in Harry’s hair.  

“You’re feeling trapped,” Harry says quietly now, forcing Louis out of the memory. His voice is croaky from sleep, his eyes half-closed.  One hand reaches across the expanse of rumpled sheets, and he trails a finger up the back of Louis’ forearm.

He nods. Doesn’t care if Harry’s looking; if he can make out the gesture in the dark.

Harry rolls onto his side, propping himself up on one elbow, rubbing the sleep out of his eyes with the heel of his hand. He’s extraordinary like this, Louis thinks, not for the first time.  Unguarded, and so very young. Like he’s somehow avoided the weight of the world that Louis’ found on his shoulders.

An eternity ago, when Harry still felt like he had to prove himself to Louis, this would have gone differently, would have ended in a fight.  But Harry knows the lines and the grooves of him now, his trailing hand tracing Louis’ tattoos, coming to rest over his abdomen. Now he knows that it’s the people sleeping in the rest of the hotel Louis can’t stand, the sycophants who will trail them in the coming days, the rabid stalkers with their cameras and their social media, the paps on the motorbikes.  These are the things that trap Louis.  Not him.  Not the feel of his fingers, his breath on the side of his neck.

And it’s still too hot, but Louis’ reaching for him, tasting a bead of perspiration, sliding his tongue across his collarbone. He’s forcing a groan from Harry’s lips as Harry rolls on top of him.  He’s the one sliding his ankles up Harry’s lean arms, folding himself in half, allowing him further and further inside.

Harry’s eyes are closed, and he’s whispering Louis’ name, and dipping occasionally to kiss his neck and nip his earlobe, and behind him Louis can see the fan sliding around and around.  It’s so hot, and he’s so full of Harry, of _them_ , and he’s the only one who sees Louis. The only one who understands.

And then there is one moment. One beat of the fan, one thrust. Louis’ sharp intake of breath. Harry’s eyes wide open. And Louis is gasping, and the heaviness lifts off his chest and he’s floating.  Harry’s saying Louis’ name over and over, and even with his weight collapsing on top of him, Louis is the one who’s flying.  Harry frees him.

He always has.

He brushes the hair back off Louis’ forehead, and presses the softest of kisses to his cheek as he settles beside him.  And it’s too hot, Louis thinks, but he curls against him just the same.

*

They don’t talk about it often.  Sometimes months will pass without either of them mentioning it.

Louis still remembers the day so clearly. The defeated slump of Harry’s shoulders and the resigned expression on the lawyer’s face. Louis had tuned out the conversation as soon as words like “watertight” and “five years” and “damages” - figures in the millions of pounds - started being bandied about.  Over the lawyer’s shoulder, out the window in the grey afternoon light, he could see music students arriving at the Barbican. Violin cases slung over their shoulders; bright-coloured beanies tugged low on their heads.  He watched a guy no older than Harry sling his arm around the boy walking beside him, as his head tipped back in laughter, exposing the pale expanse of his neck.  Louis tried to remember the last time he‘d seen Harry laugh that way, and couldn’t.  

He pushed back his chair abruptly; the lawyer and Harry both looked up in surprise.

“You know where to send the bill,” he said softly, standing and reaching his hand out for Harry to take. Harry looked for a long moment like he was going to protest, but then there was the tiniest nod of his head as he bit at his lower lip, and then he was standing as well. Shaking the lawyer’s hand and gathering the papers and stuffing them haphazardly into his satchel.

Louis guided him out of the office with a hand thumbing soft circles on the small of his back.  Harry had only just started wearing boots, and his heels clicked across the marble floors of the firm’s airless reception.  Neither of them said anything as they got in the back of the waiting black SUV, their fingers interlacing between them on the soft leather of the seat.

When they got home, Louis toed off his shoes and collapsed onto the couch, more or less face down, fumbling around for the remote.  He couldn’t find it, and gave up, his fingers splayed in the carpet.

Harry stood uncertainly in the doorway, his eyes bright with unshed tears.

“We could…”

“Don’t,” Louis cut him off.

“But we…”

“Seriously. This was it, Haz, and you know it.”

The couch cushion felt scratchy against his cheek.  Nothing else felt like much of anything at all.

Harry made a noise that sounded somewhere between a sigh and a choked-off sob, and then launched himself in his typically ungainly way on top of Louis, covering his entire body and pressing tiny hot kisses to the base of his neck.

Louis sighed into the weight of him, let him bury his tears unseen, damp in the back of Louis’ shirt. He’d put on a button-down, because it had felt like he should dress up a little to see a lawyer. How ridiculous that suddenly seemed.

“It’s going to be okay,” he whispered.  And mostly, he was right.

So, they don’t talk about it often.  There’s no countdown calendar in their kitchen; the date isn’t inked on their skin.

Sometimes, the others will make veiled references to it. “Yeah, but after…” Niall says, when Louis cuffs him softly over the head for suggesting that he tries teaching Harry to surf again.  

After.  

“Before” and “after” used to mean before and after they formed the band.

For Harry and Louis it means something different now.

It’s not as if he thought he was going to spend the rest of his life with Harry the first time he saw him or anything; his life isn’t a fucking fairytale.  But Harry’s wide grin and impossible curls and the bright, _bright_ way his eyes danced around the room in excitement, it made Louis feel molten inside.  It was the start of _something_ at bootcamp, he knew that much. That sense that this was a new best friend, the kind of kindred spirit that you meet and know straight away has to be beside you all day. The person you seek out across a room; get miffy when someone else sits down with them at lunch when it should be you.  That’s what it was like at the start. Louis just wanted Harry to pay more attention to him than anyone else.

But then it rapidly unfurled into something different; something darker and more intense and harder to wrap his mind around. It left him awake at night thinking _HarryHarryHarry_.  Replaying every moment during the day when he’d managed to make Harry laugh too loud; cataloguing every time he’d found a reason to lay a hand on his arm or tug him into a headlock or a hug.  It made it more and more difficult to phone Hannah. It made Louis’ face flush, and his heart race, and his dick hard; but none of it made any sense.

The second before the first time he kissed Harry, Louis’ brain was the loudest it had ever been.

Thoughts smashed around inside his skull like pinballs. Doubt and insecurity and fear and this overwhelming _need_ that he couldn’t explain and didn’t have words for. And then their lips met with this quiet inevitability.  The soft huff of air as they parted marked a single thought, _that’s it_ , and he was done.

It was as simple and as complicated as that.

Louis likes to say that _he_ was the first one to propose, and that he did it on camera for the whole world to see, but every time, Harry just rolls his eyes and responds with a long-suffering groan that it doesn’t count if you’re just saying it because it _rhymes_.

In private, Louis is more than happy to concede that Harry was the first to be brave enough to talk about forever. And to say it with such an easy confidence. Louis had shaken his head, and tried to press the words back into Harry’s mouth with kisses, with the palm of his hand. To try and shut him up because it was crazy. Harry was so _young_. He couldn’t possibly be sure this was it; that Louis was the one.

“I don’t even know what wild oats _are_ ,” Harry had snorted, nudging his nose against the smooth skin behind Louis’ ear, drawing his lobe between his teeth in a way calculated to make Louis gasp and rut up against him.  “I don’t need to go sow any.”  His ridiculously long fingers were sliding, teasing and pressing.  “I don’t want to touch anyone like this but you.”

Later, Louis lay boneless and sated with Harry between his legs, one smooth cheek pillowed against his thigh, his breath still warm against Louis, soft now. Harry had a sharpie from the signing they’d been at earlier, and he was drawing his own initials in black ink against Louis’ damp skin, right over the tendon above a darkening bruise he’d sucked and bitten as Louis had arched beneath him.  Louis watched, fascinated. The sheer possessiveness of it made his heart pound and all the blood in his brain race south again.

“We’re forever, Louis,” he said, as he looked up, a rogue curl stuck to his temple with sweat, his face flushed and his lips kiss-swollen and red. “We don’t need rings and ceremonies.”

Louis dragged him to the tattoo parlour the following day, the sharpie ink still clear even after their showers, the matching sets of initials the first of many.

There have been multiple proposals, over the years. As if telling them they couldn’t be together was reason enough to commit over and over again. Louis is nothing if not obtuse.

There’s a ring Harry wears in public. There’s a ring that Louis never does.  There’s necklaces. A bracelet.

There’s a padlock on a bridge in Paris. There’s a villa on the coast of Spain with tiled floors and a cool ocean breeze and the kind of expensive white cotton sheets that make Louis sigh.

There was a dinner at The French Laundry: nine courses with matched wines, a walk home under the Napa stars and the best sex of Louis’ life.

There’s a ring made from a twist-tie Harry found backstage in Brazil. A pass from Madison Square Garden with _Marry Me_ scrawled across the back.

There are three songs the public has heard and at least two they never will.

And so, now, when he thinks about _after_.  About what it will mean to be five years from the day they signed their lives away, so young and so excited and so fucking _naive_ about what it meant. Now, there’s only really one thing he thinks about.

It’s a reservation, for a sprawling country estate, that they’ve had booked for six months now.  It’s the guestlist that’s in a shared google doc saved under the name “Christmas Cards 2016” that they keep refining.

It’s a bright spring day in May that he keeps looking forward to.  That’s what “after” means.

*

It starts as a joke.

He finds Lux playing with it one morning, and rolls his eyes hard at Lottie.

“What? She found it in one of the travelling cases this morning.”

“It’s wearing bondage gear!” he hisses at her, distracting Lux with a pile of crayons and three sheets from the draft of a melody he can’t get right.  He tucks the toy under his arm.

Lottie huffs at him, barely looking up from her phone, smacking her gum.  “Like she knows. It’s just a bear to her, innit?”

He jabs her hard in the shoulder with one finger as he walks out to the rehearsal space, propping the bear up by the drum kit out of harm’s way.  Or so he thinks.  

“Josh should know better,” he mutters later, when Harry shows him the picture, and he feels like a spoilsport, the way his dimple instantly vanishes.  Louis used to be able to make Harry smile just by basically existing.  He feels his throat constrict a little when he thinks about how much that’s changed.

“I think it’s funny,” Harry objects, his face falling into a pout.

“You remember the shit he got in last time. It’s not worth it.”

Harry tactfully refrains from pointing out that Louis was the one who’d taken the brunt of the fallout last time, saving Josh’s arse from being fired by claiming it had all been his idea.

“But look how delighted they are,” Harry pushes his phone at Louis again, scrolling through post after post about the rainbow bear’s return.  “ _Teddy Mercury_!” Harry giggles, an absolute lost cause in the face of a pun.

And that’s enough for Louis, really. Not so much the way his boy’s smile lights up, though that’s a bonus, but that it’s making their fans happy.  They’re embarking on the last stretch: the grimly-titled On the Road Again tour.  And every rehearsal, Zayn’s expression gets more sour and Liam looks more exhausted. It’s unavoidable that the tension spills out all over the stage.

Louis suddenly feels so lost within these cavernous stadiums.  He’d give almost anything to be back in some of the small venues from the first tours, pressed up against each other on that stupid couch. Wearing those ridiculous outfits.  God, they’d been so fucking happy then.  Elated, all the time.

And now it’s all broken. Zayn’s not even going to make it to the end; his promises disappearing with the smoke as he breathed out. Sat in some ‘smoker’s garden’ at the back of a generic chain-brand hotel. Faded looking plants wilting around them and an overstuffed ashtray giving off a sour odour.

“S’different for you,” he said, unable to look Louis properly in the eye, which felt like even more of a betrayal.  “You always think you’ve had the worst of it, yeah? But it’s not a fucking competition.”

He wasn’t wrong, was the thing.  Niall’s the only who’s had it easy.  They threw a box of condoms at his head and told him to keep it wrapped.

“Didn’t say it was,” Louis muttered, his voice sounding cracked and bitter, smoke heavy in his lungs.

“And yeah, it’s been fucking shit for you two. I get that. But at least you have each other.”

Louis’ skin felt itchy and too tight all of a sudden, and he stubbed out the cigarette. He didn’t want to have the conversation any more. What was even the point?

“It is what it is,” he laughed humorlessly, scooping up his cigarettes and turning his back on Zayn.

So now they’re all going through the motions, just trying to get to the break. It’s getting harder and harder, and Louis hates feeling that they’re letting everyone down. Now, of all times, so close to the end.  He thinks of Ed’s lyrics: _I’m captain of this sinking boat now_.

So if Harry wants to start propping this stupid bear up at soundcheck and it makes some people happy, then it feels like the very least they can do.  

_I’ll never trust you again. You can just be a friend._

And if Harry gives him an absolutely blinding smile when Louis finds leftover props in a green room after a television interview and pimps the bear out for the Melbourne concert, then so much the better.

_I’ll wipe my shirtsleeves, under your eyes._

*

“Is it true?”  Harry comes through the door of the dressing room in a rush.  It’s like someone told him while he was getting ready to work out because his hair is up in a bun, and he inexplicably has only one trainer on.

“What?” Louis asks, aiming for nonchalant, but knowing he’s failing because his cheeks hurt from smiling so hard.

“It’s done? I mean, they’ve really signed El’s paperwork and everything?”

Louis can barely nod before Harry’s slammed the door, kicked off his shoe and closed the gap between them to grab his face and kiss him as if his life depended on it.

Louis breaks the kiss with a gasp, his eyes bright and dancing.  “Someone will hear,” he admonishes with a grin, tapping him on the nose, and Harry knows he doesn’t mean it, doesn’t care.

“I don’t give a shit,” he replies, pushing him backwards, pulling his shirt over his head.  “They walk in on us now, they’ve only got themselves to blame.”  His tongue is like lava against the skin of Louis’ neck, and he’s got the buttons of his jeans undone before they even get to the couch.

The leather - who’s he kidding, _leatherette_ \- is sticky beneath his skin and there’s a spring jabbing at his back somehow, or more likely some of Lux’s lego, and he’s pretty sure that what Harry’s doing is actually illegal in Singapore. But none of it matters because Harry is sinking down on him, tendrils of his hair escaping from his bun and his eyes locked on Louis’ with such depth of emotion that Louis has to close his own and take a deep breath.

Harry’s never hated Eleanor.  Hated what she stood for, sure, but he’s always liked her.  Last month Louis’ caught them making plans to go to London Fashion Week together when all this is behind them.  

Harry hates what’s coming next, though.  The fights they’ve had about it would have scorched the earth of most relationships.  Bitter, icy stretches of silence. Raging torrents of venomous words, calculated to strike right at each other’s weak spots. And always, _always_ the careful acts of forgiveness; the reforging of immutable bonds.

Louis is a pragmatist.  He knows this is what it takes to get to the end. Some ugly headlines, a few photos.  A fame-hungry young woman who has no idea how bad it will be despite his very best attempts to make her understand. Nine months. This is what it takes.

Harry leans forward, kisses all the air from his lungs.

They’re not “most relationships”.

*

Louis dislikes flying.

It makes him feel ungrateful, like he’s not revelling in the opportunities the universe has presented him, but airports are cold, soulless places.  Doesn’t matter how many Christmases Harry makes him watch Love Actually, it doesn’t change the fact that airports for them are just a gruelling rat-run of expediters, crowds, backrooms and hallways. They never mean tearful, happy reunions in arrivals lounges.  They mean photographers, and flashes; pushing, shoving and screams.

Private planes are almost worse than flying commercial, too small to be credible to Louis. It’s not that he’s a nervous flyer, not exactly, but at least in a whale of an A380 the actual _concept_ of flying isn’t apparent to him.  He can knock back a couple of drinks and press his face into the thin mattress of a lie-flat seat and wake hours later, groggy and stiff and in a different country.

Little planes make it all too apparent that he’s hurtling through time and space.

So he’s glad when they hit Europe again, because while it means more tiny planes, it also means that they get to fly together more often and so at least he gets to flop all over his boy and complain and fidget until Harry scratches the short hair at the back of his neck to calm him down.

They’re on their way to Brussels, and Preston is sorting a plastic sack from the night before.  Ninety percent of the stuff that hits the stage gets binned, but there are the odd things that the boys kick into touch for looking at later. Louis always wants to make sure anything of value gets donated, and he hates the idea that any fan would ever see artwork they’ve put time into in a skip outside the venue the next day.  Sometimes they keep something just because it’s funny. The four of them are going to keep regifting that banana costume to each other forever.  

But Louis isn’t paying attention, because Harry’s ridiculous fingers are trailing along the top of his spine, which is how Preston manages to bean him with the bear.

“Oi!” he yelps, sitting up.

“Matching set, now, haven’t ya?” Preston sniggers, continuing to sort.

Louis looks down at the little toy in his lap.  Smaller than Teddy Mercury; the same bright colours.  Harry’s already laughing in delight.

“We don’t have any gear for him, but.”  Louis turns the little bear around in his hand.  Could they really keep doing this? Being so _blindingly_ obvious.

Harry noses at Louis’ temple, wrapping both arms around him and pulling him close.  “Electrical tape. Lux’s doll clothes. Whatever. We’ll make do.”

*

It actually _does_ get better after Zayn leaves, which feels awful for Louis to admit, even to himself.

At first it’s just the four of them pulling together against the absence. The pre-show huddle is too small, and the extra work picking up Z’s solos is a lot.  Louis finds himself tracking Harry constantly, so that he can step in if he runs out of breath.  They all draw closer as a defensive measure, at first.

But as each show slides seamlessly into the next; as he reads the signs from fans telling them how much they love and support the four of them, how they’re here until the end, Louis starts to feel lighter.  The _shows_ start to feel lighter. Messing about with trying to drown Liam, or making Niall laugh so hard he nearly slips over.  It hasn’t been like this for so long, and it feels amazing. So of course he’s fucking wounded when that prick Zayn’s been hanging round with fires up on Twitter.  And he knows, _he knows_ he needs to let it slide. But there’s a time and a fucking place, and you don’t air dirty laundry with your _family_ like that.

He lets Harry change his passwords for a while.

He stays out longer.

Sometimes because he has to. Directed to some two-bit club that has probably paid someone too much money for the questionable privilege of Louis standing in a roped-off VIP area ignoring everybody while he sends dirty emoji-filled limericks to Harry.

Sometimes because he wants to. Because after a show he’s like a live wire with energy to burn, and some nights Harry just wants to unwind with a scalding hot shower and a bottle of ferociously expensive French wine, but Louis needs a bass thundering in his ears and the press of people all around him.  

When they were younger, both possessive as anything, it was hard to spend an evening apart. But they’ve weathered now, they have no doubts. Harry usually texts him a single ‘x’ before he falls asleep, but sometimes he forgets. And nothing makes Louis happier than getting home late, and tired and sliding under the covers behind his sleeping boy. All long limbs and tangled curls and the faint smell of sandalwood. Wrapping his arms around him, and nuzzling against his shoulder blade, exhausted and beer-buzzed and finally relaxed.

Then he can sleep.

*

Liam is still embarrassed.  

“My parents were there, for fuck’s sake.”

“You’re sort of making it worse there, Payno,” Louis interjects, unhelpfully.

“It’s fine,” Harry laughs, patting Liam comfortingly on the knee. They’re sunk in a set of couches at the afterparty in Sheffield. It’s so late, but it’s like none of them can quite bear to call it quits for the night. Like, if they go to bed, it really will be over.

Around them the crew, their tour family, spill out across the bar. Drunk and happy and nostalgic and pressing promises and phone numbers against each others’ skin.

“I’ve never done it before,” Liam continues, still morose. “Five years and...and I don’t know how many...hundreds of shows.”

Louis finds himself trying to drag forth the number, but his brain feels sluggish. There have been enough retrospective interviews lately. Feels like he should know how many shows they’ve done.

“Code switching.” Niall is sat on the floor, his back against the couch. He’s drunker than Louis has seen him in a while, an endless succession of Irish whiskeys bringing an uncharacteristic flush to his cheeks.

Liam looks confused. “What?”

“Code switching,” Niall continues. Like they aren’t all constantly surprised by the things he knows, still, five years since the first time.  “It’s the way your brain tells you not to swear in front of your fucking priest.  Or, you know, your _parents_ and thirty thousand fans.”

Liam groans.

“You two do it all the time.”

Louis looks up to find Niall gesturing slowly with his now-empty glass between him and Harry.

“What? Never swore on stage,” Louis mutters, though he’s pretty sure that’s not true.

“Nah. S’how you don’t snog each other’s faces off in public.  Your lizard brains know the context. Change your language and behaviour depending on where you are.”

Harry giggles and repeats the word ‘lizard’ a few times, as though he likes the sound of it curling off his tongue.  Louis can feel all the places where Harry is currently pressed to his side; all the points of contact pulling them to each other like tiny anchors.   

Louis thinks about it. The ease he feels whenever he and Harry are on safe ground, surrounded by friends; in a private dining room at the Dorchester, at home by the pool in L.A.  He doesn’t think twice, touching him, tugging at his curls, kissing his temple, reaching for Harry with grabby hands.

And the corresponding unease he feels the instant that changes.  Whenever a phone comes out.  When a door opens. The way his throat tightens and it gets a little harder to breathe easily. The way his jaw aches from clenching it.  

Years, and they’ve never slipped up.  Not irreparably, anyway. Not in a way that couldn’t be dealt with swiftly.

He remembers back to when he was more reckless. Sitting at a table at the Brits, Louis was already on edge because Harry was growing into this sort of effortless sexuality, and whenever he put on a suit it was hard for Louis to keep the edges of his world clear; things became a little soft and fuzzy, and it was difficult to concentrate. And even though this was still _his boy_ , dimpled smile, ducking his head to sweep his hair into place, Harry was also so very much _not_ a boy. Not any more.

So it felt like it wasn’t really Louis’ fault. Like no one could actually blame him that the moment they were sat at the table he had his leg firmly against Harry’s and his ankle hooked around him.  Harry gave his knee a reassuring pat, the heat of it through the thin fabric of Louis’ trousers doing nothing to slow the racing of his heart.

It was fucking stupid, is what it was, but he found himself turning his whole body toward Zayn, using his left hand to gesture wildly at whatever celebrity was sitting down at the next table, while his right hand snuck across to Harry’s thigh.  He slid his fingers softly over the suit fabric, still mid-anecdote to Zayn. Some stupid story about how he’d mouthed off at Liam Gallagher on the red carpet. And Zayn was laughing, and pouring them both more wine, all the while Louis was creeping toward Harry’s inseam.  

And he heard the moment that it dawned on Harry, who sort of choked a little on the water he was swallowing, so Niall patted him on the back. His leg tensed and went a little rigid and he pressed his thighs together as if to trap Louis’ hand and make him stop.

But Louis just waited him out, moving the pad of his finger in tiny circles, tracing the stitching of the expensive material, never once looking in Harry’s direction.

“Y’all right, mate?” he heard Niall ask, and Harry claimed he was fine. Slugging down more water, and drumming his hand incessantly on the table.  Louis’ fingers continued drawing tiny patterns: infinity symbols. He heard Harry exhale a little shakily, and his legs relaxed and drifted slowly apart.

The tacit permission was enough to have Louis start to stiffen himself, laughing too loud at a joke of Zayn’s that wasn’t even funny.  He pressed forward, leaning on the table, trying to make sure the others wouldn’t catch sight of his fingers trailing slowly up Harry’s leg, toward the impossible heat of him.

And the thing is, they’d gotten dressed together. Louis knew there was no underwear involved. He was being a colossal fucking tease and he couldn’t bring himself to care as his fingers eased up Harry’s hardening length.

It was Niall that broke the spell, asking Louis a direct question that he didn’t even hear over another round of applause but forcing him to turn in that direction and catch sight of Harry, wild-eyed, biting his lip, pupils blown.

Louis’ fingers fluttered over him once more.

Harry stood abruptly from the table, his expression smoldering, a cloth napkin clutched in his hand to give himself an ounce of decency.  “Need the loo,” he muttered, striding away from the table without a backward glance.

Louis pinched the skin of his wrist, tried to will himself to calm down and think rationally. Could he follow him, really? Could he drop to his knees in front of Harry in some filthy bathroom at the O2? He’d started this nonsense, in the ferocious glare of a hundred cameras and the full court of the British press. It was crazy. He had to stay exactly where he was. But his knee was bouncing under the table, and all Louis could think about was the way Harry had bitten at his lower lip, and how he was probably not more than a hundred metres from Louis right now taking himself in hand, and…

“ONE DIRECTION….”

Holy shit.

Everyone around them was standing and applauding. Panic flooded Louis’ veins.  Zayn was tugging him into a hug, and Liam was helping Niall to his feet with his crutches, and Louis was desperately looking in all directions because, _oh my god_ , Harry.  His nerves sparked with adrenaline; his skin felt hot all over.

“Where is he?” Liam hissed, as they tried to dawdle a little in taking the stage. All Louis could do was shrug, his head still swivelling around like a marionette, hoping against hope that _someone_ had found him by now, but still nothing.

Liam took the microphone.  “Has anyone seen a curly-headed one? A curly lad.  Right, well, there’s four of us now.”  Niall snorted. All Louis could think about was just how many cameras were trained on him at that moment, and how much he wanted the stage to collapse and swallow him.

“I don’t know where you are, Harry…He’s running! Look there he goes!”

Louis’ breath caught in his throat as Harry came bounding through the crowd, taking the steps two at a time.

He leaned into the mic without missing a beat, “I’m really sorry, I was having a wee.”

Louis threw his head back to look at the ceiling, unable to stop grinning like a madman.  He knew if he looked at Harry, the jig would be up.

“The toilets are ages away.”  

This boy. _This boy_.  Louis’ pulse thundered in his ears, as if he’d been the one doing the running.  He wanted to grab Harry and kiss that stupid, altogether too-knowing look off his fucking adorable face.

Harry leaned across the others, seemingly unconcerned at being surrounded by hundreds of people, eyes only for Louis, cheeks flushed, and asked him in a small voice, as if it were just the two of them, “What did we win?”

“You’re impossible,” Louis sighed later, sheets kicked to the bottom of the bed as he scrolled through the headlines.  Harry had been outside grabbing a smoke with Grimshaw; Harry had been doing lines in the bathroom with some model. A swift misinformation campaign to account for his glassy eyes and his open stare.  Harry rolled onto his stomach, his face pillowed on his tattooed arms, hair wild. The muscles in his back flexed distractingly.  

“Your fault,” he mumbled.  And he wasn’t wrong, but Louis smacked him on his bare arse all the same.

So he supposes Niall is right, drunk as he is, all these years later sat on a floor in Sheffield.  At some point, their lizard brains had taken over, and they didn’t have to think about it any more.  He wonders absently whether it will take a long time to switch back. To uncoil and relax in public.     

He wonders if he even wants to, as Harry snuggles further into him on the couch and starts murmuring about it being time to go home.  Maybe some things can just be for them.

*

Harry cooks them all dinner a month after the break starts.

Liam is already bored out of his mind, all over social media like a rash.  When he gets to their house Louis throws his overnight bag in a spare room, presses a beer in his hand, and forces him to sit down at the piano.  “No more fucking tweeting, mate, look at this.”

They fall quickly back into a routine, scrubbing out lyrics and arguing over key changes, as if they’d just stopped doing it yesterday.

He looks up at one point and takes in Harry, padding around their open-plan kitchen barefoot, wearing jeans and a stretched out t-shirt smeared with traces of oil and flour.  He’s been in there all afternoon, humming to himself and chopping, pouring, stirring god-knows-what.  His hair is up, and his skin is still golden from their week in the Caribbean, and Louis is so in love with him it makes his chest hurt a little to think about it.  So he slaps Liam’s hand for no reason, “Not like that, fucks sake. It needs to be a minor next,” and plays the chord progression a little too loudly.

Niall lets himself in an hour later, bearing two bottles of wine and a wrapped gift. Harry wipes his hands on a tea towel as he takes it, with a puzzled expression.

“Nobody’s birthday, Nialler,” Louis points out, as he slides from the piano bench to fetch him a drink.

“Open it.”

Harry tears at the paper, and his face crinkles up in a wide smile, immediately tugging Niall in for a bone-crushing hug.

“What is it?” Liam asks, as Harry holds it up for them all to see.  A sky blue table cloth, embroidered with white dots.  A fancy version of the disposable kind they’ve eaten around almost every night for the last five years.  

Louis doesn’t really read much. It’s not that he doesn’t enjoy it, or whatever. It’s just that Harry is such a voracious reader, and if he’s honest, Louis would rather lie with his head in Harry’s lap listening to him talk about what he’s been reading than ever attempt it himself.

Words on a page seem lifeless. Nothing like the way they sound in Harry’s low, slow voice.  So he doesn’t really pay attention to the half-finished New Yorker magazines folded back on themselves all over the house. He waits until Harry tells him about the stories that hold his interest.  

Years ago, he remembers - maybe it was that first trip to the States - Harry was going through a Sinatra phase. Devouring everything he could get his hands on. And he was reading to all the boys from some classic Esquire article.  About how Sinatra used to have the same group of people at a family-style dinner wherever he was in the world.  How that was the way he kept the neighbourhood with him.

He remembers Harry, so young and still so homesick at times, insisting that dinner was going to be the thing they didn’t miss.  Whatever else happened.

And he remembers thinking that this boy was going to be his home forever.

Louis blinks rapidly, because _crying_ over a table cloth would be ridiculous, but it’s just so fucking perfect for the four of them to sit down together for dinner again.  So if he squeezes Niall extra-tight before he slaps in him in the nuts, nobody needs to know.

*

Later, he’ll wonder if it was because they were all a little rusty.

Two months into the hiatus, and no formal press commitments for at least that long, they’re not used to the bland repetition they get into when they’re on tour. The sound bites that can be trotted out again and again.  “I think, this is the album we’re most proud of,” he’d heard Harry say, eleventy-billion times.  There are no surprises during promo.  Or at least there aren’t supposed to be, he thinks, remembering Niall’s look of stone-cold panic when that radio host asked about the bears.

So they’re out of practice, sure. And they weren’t planning to do interviews at all during the year.  But this charity is important to all of them, and when they agreed that they’d do this it didn’t seem stressful. Perform three songs. A short interview with James.  The questions would be predictable. What they’ve been doing over the break so far, why the charity’s important to them, blah blah.  It’s live, but that’s fine.

That morning, Harry has the sneaky beginnings of a cold. He says his throat feels a little thick and his ears ache a bit in a way that suggests his sinuses are going to be giving him hell the next day.  It makes him clingy, and Louis stays close, bringing him cups of tea and telling a pert young BBC stylist to fuck off with her bronzer so Harry can curl into him, long limbs folded at awkward angles on the bench seat in the cramped trailer.  He cards his fingers through Harry’s hair, whispering nonsense and assuring him it will be over before they know it and reminding him that their cleaner came today so there will be fresh sheets on the bed, and he can overdose on vitamin C and sleep as long as he needs to.

An assistant comes to summon them, and they make their way to the backstage area, wending through outside broadcast trucks and thick, snaking cables.  Niall is a fizzing ball of energy, cheering, “S’been ages, lads!”  

Louis just hands a water bottle and a throat lozenge to Harry and rolls his eyes.  “It’s been eight weeks, you muppet.”  

But it does feel good. To step back out on a stage under blinding lights and hear the delighted screams of the crowd.  He bounces on his toes a little as the music starts up.  The set goes well. He can hear the start of strain in Harry’s voice, but it’s not that noticeable, and before he can think about it they’re bowing and being ushered across to a couch where Corden will interview them as the stagehands reset for the next act.

James asks them about this story in the tabloids that Niall killed a duck with a spectacularly mistimed drive at a celebrity golf open in Australia. The duck didn’t actually die, it was just stunned, but all four of them are laughing so hard as Niall tries to retell it that it gets a little lost in translation.

Harry lets out a sneeze, and Louis gets distracted. He wants this to be over now. They need to get home.

“So boys, how’s the _hiatus_ ,”  James drags the pronunciation, sounding like Harry’s robot voice app, and they all laugh.  There have been literally a thousand ‘ate ass’ jokes since Harry’s app first said the word, and none of them can help it now, it’s automatic.

And so maybe it’s because they’re rusty, or because he slung his arm across the back of the couch behind Harry as they sat down, or maybe it’s because Harry’s sick and a little punch-drunk from the cold and flu meds he swallowed all morning. Later, he won’t be sure exactly what happened.  

Louis will turn the moment over and over in his mind.

That endless second where Liam is saying _high-ate-ass_ for the third time, and Harry curls himself into Louis as he always does when he’s a bit embarrassed, burying his face in Louis’ neck.  And Louis does it without thinking, just presses a kiss to his forehead, right at his hairline.

And then.

 _Oh_ , he thinks.

 

Oh.

 

The sound is thunderous, like no ovation he’s ever heard, not in the largest of the stadiums they’ve ever played. The crowd has gone insane.  

He looks up with a start. Niall’s expression is sheer terror, his mouth fallen open.  James has a vein bulging on the side of his neck, his face flushing red as he looks at the cameras, the _live broadcast cameras_ , and then back at Louis.   

James stammers, “Well..that’s not going to do anything to quash the rumours now, is it lads?”  His voice cracks.  His expression is pleading. _Give me something_ , Louis can practically hear him thinking. _Anything, to work with here._

Louis looks at his boy.  Harry has eyes only for him. Flush high on his cheeks, eyes bright. Waiting. Louis knows it’s his own choice, that it’s probably _always_ been his choice.  That even if Harry’s dead wrong, he’s always believed Louis’ had it a little harder, felt it more keenly, carried more of the weight.

Over the years, they’ve talked about it happening a thousand different ways.

A sedate interview with Barbara Walters (nixed by Louis, because “who the fuck do you think we are, royalty?”).  On stage at the end of a concert (nixed by Liam, because “you two snog on stage and there will be an actual bloody riot”).

One night when a pap pissed Louis off he tried to drag Harry outside a club to prove a point.  “He’s a fucking loser,” Louis raged, “Calling me a deadbeat dad. I’ll show him what a committed fucking relationship looks like.”  And yes, he was drunk, but he still couldn’t see why Harry didn’t think that plan was completely excellent.

Niall has nearly accidentally outed them more times than they can count, so he’s not allowed to attach pictures to anything at all any more. Not even texts to his own family.  That’s the rule. Even Maura understands that.

But never once did it occur to them that _they_ might be the ones to slip up.

Harry’s eyes are dancing.  He’s not upset, and he’s not afraid, and maybe that’s all Louis’ ever needed.

“Sorry, I guess we’re in countdown mode,” he says, finally, looking back at the cameras.

Confusion crosses James’ face and Louis knows he’s absolutely going to kill him later for stringing out this dead air on a live broadcast.

“To uh…” James scrambles, “...to, a countdown to returning to the fans? That’s what’s got you uh...excited?  Have you set a date for the end of the break?”

Louis takes a deep breath.  

“No, James. As you ought to know from that bloody invite stuck to your fridge,” he takes Harry’s hand, lacing their fingers together.  “We’re getting married pretty soon.”

If he thought the noise was deafening before...

*

When he tries to think about it now, the rest of that day is a bit of a blur.

He remembers James’ startled laugh.  “Well, ‘bout time you put a ring on it.  Ladies and gentlemen, give it up for One Direction, half of them headed to the altar!  After the break, the ladies from Little Mix now have quite a lot to live up to.”

He remembers the signal from behind the cameras that the ad break had started, and the veritable wail that Niall let out as he launched himself at the two of them, tugging Liam into the kind of puppy pile of a hug they’d left behind years ago.  “Can’t believe it, can’t fucking believe it” he kept repeating, and Louis’ pretty sure there were tears, but Niall swears now that’s bullshit.

He doesn’t remember Harry saying anything to him on stage, but he does remember that as they were hustled off and into a green room, Harry wouldn’t let go of him.  His hand wrapped around Louis’ like an anchor, about the only thing that seemed to be stopping him from just up and floating away.

He knows Liam was trying really hard to be delighted, but his expression was just a total mess of concern and he kept scrubbing at his face with his hands.

After that, Louis’ memories are just bits and pieces.  

A BBC producer asking them if they wanted to do another interview right away, offering them a news crew; Harry’s thumb stroking across the back of Louis’ knuckles as he shook his head. A PR person yelling into a phone. Three decoy vehicles and someone trying to separate them, trying to convince them to go in different cars, and neither of them speaking but Harry just refusing to let go of his hand. Eventually Preston relented but only if both he and Dale came with them, because by then the paps were absolutely swarming, and they wound up jammed together in this non-descript SUV someone found and so they still said nothing all the way out of London and back to their home.

He remembers he had to power off his phone at one point because the notifications went so crazy it was hot against his leg.

He remembers the front door closing with a snick and Harry’s death grip on him finally loosening, as he tugged him down onto their wide couch, fitting Louis body alongside his, and wrapping both his arms around him.

“Need to call me mum,” he said, finally, and he thinks maybe those were his first words, his cheek against Harry’s chest, breathing him in.  

“Soon,” Harry murmured, continuing to envelop Louis, as if he was afraid to let him go.  There was a long, comfortable silence. Just their breathing. The clock in the kitchen ticking. Maybe minutes went by; maybe hours.

“Do you remember, the night we got home from Leeds,” Harry said, quietly. “And we were so exhausted, and so fucking filthy. Like two humans have never needed showers more than we did at that point.”

Louis’ eyes slipped closed as he thought about the memory, felt Harry’s voice rumbling in his chest.

“And we knew, like we didn’t talk about it, but we knew that we were going to get in so much shit for having gone.  But that night, we lay on that awful couch.  Remember how fucking ugly it was, even before Stan spilt rum all over it?”  

Louis huffed a small laugh. Harry had always _hated_ that couch.

“And we lay there, too tired to, like even turn the TV on or anything. Covered in mud and stinking of stale beer, and I was just so unbelievably _happy_. I couldn’t believe that I got to be there like that, with you. I thought that was the most I could _ever_ feel.  Like my heart had expanded so much it was stretched out, permanently.  I was so bloody gone for you, Louis.”

Louis twisted a little in his embrace, so that he could pull back to look at Harry, propping himself up on one elbow.  Harry’s expression was so unguarded, so _open_. Bright green eyes staring up at him under dark lashes. Hair haloed out around his face. So fucking beautiful, it made Louis’ heart stutter.

“Ever since then, you and I have done so much and seen so many things. We’ve been _everywhere_ and tried everything. And still - like _that_ night has still been the one I think back to.  Like it didn’t matter what else happened, I’ve never been more in love with you than I was at that moment.”

Louis’ breath caught in his throat. Harry told him he loved him all the time, but this felt different somehow.

“Until today.  Until I saw that look in your eyes when you realised what had happened - saw it all cross your face in the space between heartbeats, Lou. That split-second when you could have pulled back, or made a joke or done anything to defuse the situation. And there was just this blink in time where you looked at me and I knew you weren’t going to.”

Louis’ eyes welled up. He couldn’t even help it. Harry cupped his face, one thumb gently tracing Louis’ cheekbone. He felt weightless, all of a sudden. Like every single chain that had bound them for the last five years had snapped and fallen away.  Like time had become bendy, and the Harry beneath him was seventeen all over again: short curls, festival bracelets, tasting like cinnamon gum.

Harry kissed him softly, with reverence.

“I’ve never been more proud to be yours, Louis.”

His memories of that day are so disjointed, but those words will always be etched in stone.

“What are you thinking about?” his Mum asks him, as she straightens his tie.  

How lucky he is, he thinks. How fucking blessed that given all the possible ways his future could have unfolded, this is how it turned out.  How every grim, awful day; every lie, every bullshit story printed in the press is behind him for now. How liberating that is, but also how terrifying. That without constraints there are also no excuses. That it’s on him now.

“Nothing. Reminiscing,” he shrugs, batting her hands away with a smile, and kissing her swiftly on the cheek.  “Let’s not be late.”

It’s a bright spring day in May, and he’s got an aisle to walk down.

  
  
  
  


**Author's Note:**

> Thank you for the wonderful prompts, [fightingforlarry](http://archiveofourown.org/users/fightingforlarry/pseuds/fightingforlarry). Hope I did this one justice:
> 
>   _There's a reason One Direction don't do live interviews. The most obvious one being that Louis and Harry just accidentally kissed during one by accident. Well.....their secret relationship isn't so secret anymore._
> 
> The lyrics are from Ed Sheeran’s song, [Shirtsleeves](https://open.spotify.com/track/7awwmuGslmuyhnlpFipDqk)
> 
> The title comes from [Tyler Knott Gregson](http://tylerknott.com/post/135123947872/ill-be-beside-you-and-youll-never-need-wonder).
> 
> [tumblr post](http://helenahjay.tumblr.com/post/140457313903/youll-never-need-wonder-you-get-like-this) for sharing.


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